When Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer does his bounding these days, it’s often in front of an 82-inch interactive display mounted on the wall of his office. Ballmer gets to poke at the screen—a Perceptive Pixel LCD—like a more energetic version of Wolf Blitzer. The display points to Microsoft’s vision for an interactive future in which documents, spreadsheets, and presentations get animated and people work on projects with more gesticular gusto. (This is a future that plays to Ballmer’s strengths.)